The World Is Messy - Probabilistic - Relativism

Listened to this Hidden Brain on the commute this morning. 

https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/why-youre-smarter-than-you-think/

The IQ part is of course interesting and how IQ can't measure desire or passion or interest of course leaves the concept wanting. 

I have always found myself going back to Kurzweil's definition of intelligence - the ability to solve problems with limited resources. 

Alas, problems for you might not be problems for me.

But the real kipper of the piece for me was when he used the word "messy."

The world is messy. 

Here is some of the context:

Shankar Vedantam:

You've also said that IQ tests fail to capture the full range of human potential, in that they focus on the explicit, the conscious, the controlled forms of thinking. What does this leave out, Scott?

Scott Barry Kaufman:

Absolutely. Well, one specific thing I did study in my dissertation is this idea called implicit learning, which is our ability to learn the probabilistic rule structure of the world automatically and implicitly without a level of awareness. This is deep implications. I mean, so you talk about the theme of your show, right here, we're getting to... this is very, very congruent. I mean, think about what is required to develop social intelligence. Sometimes when people smile, they mean this, sometimes they don't. Sometimes when people's eyes are like this, sometimes they don't. The world is messy.

Probabilistic rule structure of the world. 

There are no absolutes. From the hard sciences to the social sciences, not one truth.

And yet, we can be happy. We can move through the world with grace and patience and humility and smile and be smiled at. 

Relativism is your friend. 

Old systems, especially in an education system, but you also see it in organizations and hiring practices. It goes deep, this stuff, a lot of these assumptions we have about human potential that are really outdated and just wrong.

 

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Religion is an old system, really outdated and unhealthy. We aren't fallen, we aren't born in sin, we aren't corrupt, we don't need saved, the body isn't bad. 

Time to let it go. Time to embrace the messy world with a new paradigm. A healthier paradigm. 

You'll thank me.

Dog Food And Truth

I had a truly terrible dream last night.

I had a dream I was taking a German exam and I was unable to prepare for the exam–my ability to memorize got me through undergrad and a scholarship for graduate school (I once got a 100% on a Spinoza exam mostly by memorizing a shit-ton of Spinoza)–so this was terrible for me. 

But, it got worse, the way some dreams do. While taking this awful exam, with pictures I couldn't make sense of and directions I couldn't make sense of, pages out of order, I tried to go up to the front of the class to ask the prof for clarification. But you know dreams, while trying to make my way to the front of the class, I get lost, end up on a crowded sidewalk in a crowded city and almost get hit by a trash truck, only to reach a prof for a previous Marxism class, plus my exam is all out of order and I can't even ask her questions. So I'm trudging back to my German class, exam in hand, fighting the people on the sidewalk and the occasional car up on the sidewalk when, I wake up.

I have dreams of this ilk and they are awful. The feeling resides upon waking. The feeling of being lost and unprepared. I hate to Heidegger this up (do I though? Don't I love Heidegger?) but this feeling of geworfenheit, of being thrown...into the world is truly awful, almost horror...for me.

And I thought about writing upon awaking. And I thought about perhaps my son, asking me why I have these kinds of dreams.

And I thought about explaining to my nine year old Juju that: I'm not satisfied with quaint little stories. Though quaint and cute they may be. I think I have these dreams because I seek accurate explanations.

"But you're a relativist!" I hear from the interlocutor.

Indeed. You have me pegged. 

But my relativism doesn't quell the questioning. This is the crux.

Consider an example:

You're starving. You haven't had a crumb of food in, let us say three weeks, and the only reason you are alive is you've had access to water. Truly starving is my point here. You'll die unless you find something to eat.

You find something to eat.

A can of wet, dog food.

Yes, dog food. It'll keep you alive and sustain you. Perfectly edible, dog food is. 

My relativism is dog food. Can sustain me but it doesn't taste very good and it doesn't go down easily. Different from the quaint, candy-like stories that go down oh so smooth, but rot your teeth.

Truth is relative, per Lakoff and Metaphors We Live By but I am still thrown into this world and I live and move about in the minutiae and the people who thwart my projects (so much Heidegger this guy!) and offend my delicate sensibilities.

The world gives me dog food when I want to order off menu–the Dirty Steak from Al Forno in Providence, after a grilled pizza appetizer, with a single malt to wash it all down.

Dog food.

And relative truth.

"We do not believe that there is such a thing as objective (absolute and unconditional) truth, though it has been a long-standing theme in Western culture that there is. We do believe that there are truths but think that the idea of truth need not be tied to the objectivist view. We believe that the idea that there is absolute objective truth is not only mistaken but socially and politically dangerous. As we have seen, truth is always relative to a conceptual system that is defined in large part by metaphor. Most of our metaphors have evolved in our culture over a long period, but many are imposed upon us by people in power—political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders, advertisers, the media, etc. In a culture where the myth of objectivism is very much alive and truth is always absolute truth, the people who get to impose their metaphors on the culture get to define what we consider to be true—absolutely and objectively true. It is for this reason that we see it as important to give an account of truth that is free of the myth of objectivism (according to which truth is always absolute truth). Since we see truth as based on understanding and see metaphor as a principal vehicle of understanding, we think that an ac-count of how metaphors can be true will reveal the way in which truth depends upon understanding." 

Expert Opinions

What we've got here..., is failure to communicate.

By what, is truth determined, Paul? Agreement? Tacit or explicit? Do all need to agree or is "more likely than not" sufficient?

Paul, what would you do if indeed facts were pliable? What would you do if you knew your beloved immutable scientific facts were littered, littered I scream, with pliability. 

Did you not see my previous post Paul?

Truth is relative Paul and there aint a dang thing you can do about it. You can "sky is falling" claim that Western Civilization's days are numbered but that won't change the cold hard slap of relativism...Paul. 

And he's gonna use gender to weasel into Postmodernism! Hoo boy. "Supplant Empiricism?" We don't need gender to supplant empiricism, empiricism did that all by itself. But let us not forget the atrocities of WWII what with all of that empiricist glory. 

I can hear Thomas Dolby now: She blinded me, WITH SCIENCE! [literally]

Gender, Paul, is an abstraction; never was it universally recognized as immutable scientific fact. Even Plato would throw up in his mouth with that bullshit. But that is irrelevant. 

I see through you Paul. I know what you are after. I can feel you chasing it, peering around corners, tailing with highest of hopes.

You want certainty Paul. You want a fixed point from which to navigate. Did you honestly think you were going to find it with gender?

Ah nuance and bi-valence and shades and spectrum and degrees how they are loathed. But the Pauls '83 of the world don't realize that the immutable is a vacuum of a different sort, but nonetheless a vacuum that nature abhors.

p.s., 

And did we really need to write:

 insidious postmodern mindset that is beguiling the current generation

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Real Time with Bill Maher

https://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher

There are three truths

in the world.

There's your personal truth.

No one's gonna take that

from you.

Jesus is your savior.

Mohammed is your last prophet.

Then, there's like

a political truth.

That's just what becomes true

when it is repeated

enough times. Okay?

But then there's

the objective truth--

There's the objective truth,

which are the methods or tools

of science are invented

-and designed to establish.

-Right.

Those are true, whether or not

you believe in them.

And so, I say, "You can keep

your 6,000-year universe,

but understand that that's

a personal truth that you get

from your personal religion."

If you rise to power and have

control over laws

and legislation

in a pluralistic land,

it is a recipe for disaster

if you're going to take

your personal truths and create

laws that have to then apply

to everyone.

What if you rise to power and feel that if you don’t adhere to your personal truths,

you will burn in hell for eternity?

To which truth can you refer to help determine when a mass of biology is a person? To
which truth can you refer to help determine when the termination of that mass of biology is
murder or reproductive rights.

It is not a Stephen Jay Gould non-overlapping magisteria/Rudyard Kippling nary the two shall
meet SITUATION.

Oh and by the way, there is no objective truth. Truths are relative to culture.

How could a perspective-limited species get at objective truth?

Perhaps this is out starting point for living with each other.

Accepting relativism.

“What’s an illusion Dad?”

Mom decided she wanted to go for a picnic. She rounded us up and told dad to go to the market to get some lunch meat. We drove out to North park. Mom unloaded the picnic basket as we waited at the table.

“Joseph!”

Whenever my mom called dad Joseph instead of Joe or Joey we knew the shit was about to hit the fan. We grew tense.
“Joseph,” she said again as she opened she paper surrounding the lunch meat. “What the hell kind of lunch meat did you get.”

We looked at each other as mom glared at dad then we looked back at dad.

“This lunch meat is all brown!”

Another glare-down and we didn’t dare move; watching mom stink-eye dad as he eyed us.

“Babe, you still got your sunglasses on.”

This story was told to me at a luncheon following a funeral for my wife’s grandmother. She was 98 years young. It was the best, most profound part over the two days of calling hours and a catholic funeral.

You see at this catholic funeral the priest used great grammy’s death to parlay her devout catholicism as more reason to follow jesus, believe in jesus, live a life in and through jesus, so you (we) can be reunited with jesus upon our death.

Mmm, hmm. They call it proselytising.

You probably think nothing of this.

But as I struggle, excruciatingly, with the baptism of my children, I can’t help but think of something else the priest mentioned at the funeral.

I picked up on it while no one else did because I studied Leibniz.

“god knew what Helen was going to do from the moment she was born.”

Actually father, god knew what Helen was going to do from the moment of creation, not just her creation.

Please see Leibniz and the Principle of Pre-Established Harmony. From the moment of creation god knew what every monad would do. Every. Monad. For eternity.

Mmm, hmm. We call it foreknowledge. No biggie right. But if I told you I was god and I knew what you were going to do would you feel like you had a choice?

What the hell does all this have to do with suffering the thought of baptism?

Baptism happens early so that there is not so much time to think, to ask certain, cutting questions about just how things work.

I seem to notice this much more than all my catholic in-laws but the words just seem to mindlessly flow by them at the xmass masses and baptisms and weddings and I don’t think it is because I’m the atheist in the room; I think it is because they have been hearing it from day one. It would be like questioning the alphabet.

Mmm, hmm. We call it indoctrination. And if you don’t start early the effects may not hold.

And I worry about how this will play out for my children. I want them to fearless to question and voracious for truth.

“How, what if I...but why not just...to whom, for whom…?

Can they get that after, well, you know....psst!... indoctrination?

Indoctrination is clothed in ritual. And ritual is the illusion of permanence.

“What’s an illusion Dad?”

“Christianity.”

Yeah maybe I’m full of shit but I do know this, not much of Helen’s humanity was mentioned at that funeral. Not much at all.

I liked Helen. She was always nice to me and we both liked to do crosswords and baseball. I don’t think that had anything to do with the rosary or jesus.

“You still got your sunglasses on.”

Take em off and see the light.      

Everything In Moderation

Let us examine:

Everything in moderation. Especially moderation.

You see. It’s a little bit funny till you start to think about it. And you start to realize that language and words ARE LIMITED.

And yet, it seems that language is our vehicle to truth and objectivity.

Moderation in moderation means that sometimes you have to go to extremes. Consider life without stretching to an extreme. Drunkenness, sex, action movies, eating out: all, very extreme.

But then our adage is rendered untrue. Because moderation is contained within the everything that is supposed to be in moderation.

What is a homo sapien to do? Where can a guy or gal go to find a little truth and objectivity?

You don’t do anything. Sans abandon old saws like everything in moderation, which as it turns out, isn’t sharp enough to cut bread.

Nope you just sit back and enjoy the cool sounds and harmonic stylings of that old fan favorite – relativism.

It has everything you need to get by in a crazy world. And if you think it doesn’t, that’s cool daddy-O, just pop open a history book of your choosing and savor the relativism deliciousness and rest easy knowing that absolutism is a thing of the past. Just like sacrifices and cat torturing. Hell we used to know that a bumblebee couldn’t fly!

Relativism – the truth! As far as it goes anyway. Which, isn’t very far but still.

Worm Bellies

Here was a man who thought about epistemology, thought about it in relation to what many call politics and by extension, morality, or ethics if you prefer the non-objectivist mode. Cause when you get down to it, down to the bottom, where the worms hang out and the truth sits under their bellies, one has to know the truth, one has to know how one came to that truth, and one has to know how to do it again.

Confused and Apologetic About The Boy In You - Stuart Dybek

Funny but after two of my posts today I continued my lunchtime reading of a collection of short stories from Stuart Dybek entitled The Coast of Chicago. Death of The Right Fielder hit me hard in context of my two, serious/not serious/kinda serious posts today, especially the last paragraph of ugly truth:

                "As for us, we walked back, but by then it was too late – getting on to supper, getting on to the end of summer vacation, time for other things, college, careers, settling down and raising a family. Past thirty-five the talk starts about being over the hill, about a graying Phil Niekro in his forties still fanning them with the knuckler as if it’s some kind of miracle, about Pete Rose still going in headfirst at forty, beating the odds. And maybe the talk is right. One remembers Willie Mays, forty-two years old and a Met, dropping that can-of-corn fly in the ’73 Series, all that grace stripped away and with it the conviction, leaving a man confused and apologetic about the boy in him. It’s sad to admit it ends so soon, but everyone knows those are the lucky ones. Most guys are washed up by seventeen."

Is all truth ugly? When did you wash up?

Existential Hangover

The morning sun beat down on his bed as if attached to a fire house siren inside a continuous thunder clap. Gooey throbs of pain pulsed at his temples in different intervals allowing no girding; only wincing ex post facto. His barren mouth yenned for liquid but that would require movement and movement increased the pain –everywhere. His pulse could be found in his throat driving straight up and out of his skull bending his brain and shoving it out of the way for escape. He was stuck in the fetal position as this seemed to be the safest position, something about going back to how you were in the womb was obvious. Here he would stay for another 6 hours, motionless but fiercely battling alcohol poisoning. 

After six hours he could move and he needed to as now the vomiting commenced. A white hot retch after retch above a cold, calculating orifice was his price. While the old pains waved and beat in his body like a flag in a storm, a new more physical, structural, in-the-bones pain surfaced, burning his throat and punching his abdomen and back retch after retch, heave after heave. Blood began to show in the vomit, at first droplets, followed by splotches, puddling into half cups in the desecrated water. He’d been sick before but never this much blood before. At last retch, only blood spewed from his mouth leaving a heinous blood film on his teeth, the taste there, in his mouth, like some horrible infinite regress. 

He could have called 911. He probably should have called 911. Didn’t they say that time heals all wounds or was it that time wounds all heals? This tautology, this axiom, this objective truth melding into a nihilism in his body, born from fermentation, from rotting, from time (there it is again) could not be outstripped. He could not fallacy his way out of it, there was no cognitive dissonance, and there was no forced dichotomy to appeal to, for help. There was death from the poison or there was recovery, then death. The variable was time.